


While Away Time

by Storycat9



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: A Heart of Gold and a Whole Lot of Tentacles, Angst and Humor, Blanket Trigger Warning Because You Don't End Up In Hell for Anything Good, Body Dysphoria, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Impatient Lucifer, Multi, Other, Politics in Hell, Post-Season/Series 04, Puzzled Hell Denizens, Ruler of Hell, Some bad language, Stars, The Devil Hates Lies, Wings, Wonky Time, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:14:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 15,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25001479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Storycat9/pseuds/Storycat9
Summary: Lucifer Morningstar, newly returned King of Hell, is outwardly regal, imposing, royally vengeful--but privately climbing the walls (sometimes literally). What's a former detective-Devil got to do for a little distraction? Why, unravel an underworld mystery, of course! Plus a spot of conniving, several very confused Demons, and maybe even mercy for a lost Soul or two.
Relationships: Chloe Decker & Mazikeen, Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 26
Kudos: 62





	1. Three Hundred Sixty Years, Two Months

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I've never posted before, so if anyone has any edits, I welcome them! Hopefully this will keep *me* from climbing the walls before Season 5 comes out.

> _What must it be, then, to bear the manifold tortures of hell forever? Forever! For all eternity! Not for a year or an age but forever. Try to imagine the awful meaning of this. You have often seen the sand on the seashore. How fine are its tiny grains! … Now imagine a mountain of that sand, a million miles high, reaching from the earth to the farthest heavens, and a million miles broad, extending to remotest space, and a million miles in thickness. … Imagine that at the end of every million years a little bird came to that mountain and carried away in its beak a tiny grain of that sand. How many millions upon millions of centuries would pass before that bird had carried away even a square foot of that mountain, how many eons upon eons of ages before it had carried away all. Yet at the end of that immense stretch time not even one instant of eternity could be said to have ended. At the end of all those billions and trillions of years, eternity would have scarcely begun.”_
> 
> _–James Joyce, “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”_

I didn’t pay much attention back in high school English, but that quote came back to me after I’d been here awhile. A few eons, maybe. A couple beakfuls of sand for Joyce’s songbird to carry. I’ve had a long time in Hell to think about that quote.

He was wrong, of course—got it almost completely ass-backwards. See, there’s infinities and there’s _infinities_. A bunch of them, really, all running at the same time. The Silver City, locked in limitless ecstatic Now (or as the Boss would say, “Dad’s bullshit”), that’s the timeline where whole continents can rise and sink into the sea on Earth, species can evolve and die out in the time it takes for an angel to blink. We stretch on forever here too—and if you want to feel a moment that lasts forever, you should try getting your spine peeled off in front of you sometime—but our time runs faster than Earth-time, and way faster than the Silver City.

One hour on Earth equals a month in Hell. And yes, that does mean Hell is closer to you, timewise, than Heaven is. It always has been. Ashmedai once told me that all of the Host who Fell with the Morningstar were tethered to Earth when they Fell, and they’re drawn more to your plane than they ever were to the home where they were cast out. And it’s part of the torment of this place that those who come here from Earth know that everyone they left behind will still be there for 40,000-odd years, tempting you with the thought of getting out, somehow reaching them again.

Sometimes the demons show souls what the living are doing, just for fun. Yes, that kid you drunkenly slammed into when you flipped your car and punched your ticket here is still in the hospital, because it’s barely been a few hours for him; his dad’s body isn’t even in the ground yet when you’ve been tortured in Hell for months. The kid’s still in a wheelchair thousands of years later, and no, he hasn’t forgiven you. It seriously messes with the minds of the souls coming in. Ashmedai personally enjoys showing off to the abusive spouses who brutalized or killed their beloveds and made their children live in fear. That writhing combination of useless rage and grief and jealousy and regret as they watch their former families _so much happier_ without them makes the Third Prince of Hell smile, which may be second only to the Morningstar in full-blown rage in terms of the most terrifying thing down here.

But then, Ashmedai has been smiling a lot lately. And the Morningstar’s temper has been fraying, bit by bit, as the days go by out in the human plane … as the years go by here.

I watch him, our returned King, and I worry.

* * *

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not obvious, particularly since everybody from the least damned soul to the highest Prince generally just tries to keep out of our King's way. 

The Morningstar has always been restless, and has always had a temper. You people seem to envision him sitting cold and calm on his great black throne, and I have no idea why—maybe you’re thinking he has to be the evil version of his Old Man in paintings? But the Morningstar would no more stay still than would all his fiery children spinning out in space.

He holds Court with formal hearings with nastily complex protocol, but also with glittering, lavish parties, and even with gladiatorial battles of clashing metal, smoke and screaming. Only the wiliest courtiers of Hell can keep their heads to deliver their reports and answer policy questions as easily while half-blinded in gore as they can while standing at stock attention for weeks, or while dancing in a rave that goes on for months at a time.

But they have no choice; the Boss can pay attention to everything at once and can scent deception and secrets half an infinity away. He used to like to change shape in the middle of speaking, emphasizing a point with a flourish of dragon smoke or a flap of leathery wings, or turning into living lighting crackling across a room full of writhing demons. (One reason I tend to hug the walls.) Kept his counselors on their toes.

The Boss seems to revel in odd multitasking. He once held a philosophical debate with Augustine of Hippo in the middle of an orgy so chthonic that it was tough to identify which participant’s orifice was whose. I remember the Boss’s smug grin when the former church father’s arguments faltered, and he sunk down into whichever perdition was handiest. I’m as damned a soul as they come and far be it from me to yuck anybody’s yum, but Satanic orgies always give me migraines. Skins start melting together in unpleasant ways after a while, and it’s impossible to avoid tripping on random limbs or tentacles on your way to the bar. Still, I always thought too many of old Augie’s views around women and Original Sin were sour grapes from losing his first lover, so maybe finally giving up his “chastity and continence” again were good for him.

Anyway, the Boss grew bored with the whole orgy not long after and wandered out with Marbas and one of his lieutenants on the rumor that a Hellbound Viking ship had found the cursed Norse sword _T_ _yrfing_ somewhere in the Sunless Sea. The blade was known to kill any being it was drawn against—though also to eventually damn its wielder—and since that wasn’t a problem for the Boss it seemed like a useful thing to have on hand for the eventual dust-up with Michael. They never found the sword, but they came back with new drinking songs and the Boss went through a fresh century or two of enthusiasm for razing and burning things. He liked quests, until he got bored of them.

And despite what the idiots Up There would tell you, the Boss has even vacationed Earthside before from time to time, with none of Them the wiser and no more horrors than usual here. Usually it was just a few hundred years, maybe a millennium at most—a long holiday weekend in Earth time—and he’d come back same as before, often as not with a passel of howling souls tucked into his luggage. Sure, one Demon Prince or another generally tried to take over while he was gone, but since the Morningstar holds the Keys to Hell and the Throne doesn’t answer to anyone else, nothing came of it. Ashmedai, who never bothered to rebel, said they thought the Boss made a point of giving demons enough time to revolt, so he could have the joy of stepping on everyone’s necks when he came back.

Up until this last time, the Morningstar never seemed worse for wear when he came back, either. I couldn’t speak for the Fallen, but none of us regular damned or lesser demons had ever seen the Boss so mundane as to be glum. Raging, bored, stubborn, pouting, wanton, bitter, wild, poisonous, calculating, gleeful, snarky, seductive, plotting, cold, malicious, judging, even blithely nihilistic. But never simply tired, never simply sad.

Perhaps he never stayed still long enough around us for the quieter emotions to catch up to him.


	2. Like a Circle in a Spiral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A word to the squeamish: Hell loops are no joke, ya'll.

When the Morningstar isn’t partying or politicking, he’s prowling across the infinite length and breadth of Hell, surprising treasonous demons and eavesdropping on hell-loops.

A little more than 12,400 years into my stay, he found mine.

* * *

_... somewhen ..._

... I fall to my knees in the forest, scraping the skin but hastily scrambling to my feet. I’m picking my way through the loamy underbrush of dense woods on bare, scratched feet, a thin knife held low in my hand and a sack thrown over one shoulder. I’m trying to keep silent, trying not to run because there are things out here in the woods that are attracted to running, attracted even to breathing too loudly. I’m late to the Devil’s Sabbath.

I’m losing light in the dusk and know I have to hurry, but in the fog, the light of the wood does funny things. Between a space in the trees I step into a clearing and it’s suddenly bright golden afternoon, gorgeous, the scent of honeysuckle in the air and I hear the gentle crashing and burbling of a creek through the bushes on my right.

Bile rises in my throat, deep dread crushing my chest so hard for a moment I double over in panic, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes.

_It’s not real. Not real. It’s night, it’s autumn, there’s no creek here._

Shuddering, I back up until the chill and the smell of wet, leafy decay comes back. The clear, now black sky peeking through the stark branches above me, a few icy stars burning. I see a fuzzy tilted blur of them overhead to the left. _Still going the right way._ I gasp for breath, relief and dread mingling, and push on through brush away from the clearing.

The ground thickens with thorny vines until my feet bleed. It gets harder and harder to find paths until I’m clawing through the brush itself. I feel it slash away my clothes, my skin, thorns sharp, holding me back, and the more tightly it crowds the more I panic. My feet come off the frozen ground. I’m swimming through a brier made of vines and branches but also blades and broken mirrors, catching glimpses of my own face, bleeding and terrified—

And now, kicking like a hare in a fox’s mouth, I pop out into the middle of another clearing, this one cold and dark. I look around and nearly laugh with relief. I’ve made it. I’m not too late.

I can barely remember anything, but I still know myself. I know I am a demon, and I can get power here if I can just complete the ritual before … something …

I can still make everything right.

The slate slab in the center of the clearing, that must be a Dark Altar. I fall to my knees beside it, lay my knife to the side and unsling my bag. But when I start to pull out supplies, they keep changing in my hands. A blood-stained chalice flickers, becomes a plain flat flask filled with an amber liquid. Occult tools become bowls, berries, … frantically, I pull more and more out, finding nothing I can use, my blood thundering in my ears.

“No … no, no, no please it’s got to be here …”

A voice in the night behind me intones: “It is too late.”

“No, wait, I can fix this—"

“The Sacrifice is here.”

I turn, knife in hand, dread churning in my gut, to see a teenage girl with a cap of short brown curls standing in the clearing. She smiles at me, fearless.

I don’t know her, do I?

... I don’t know her, but I-I-

Tears stream down my face. I find myself a mewling wreck on the frozen ground, watching her come, wanting her to run, run _right now_ and knowing she won’t. When she reaches out to take my hand I scream at how badly it burns, and I clench my eyes shut and hold on, harder, harder.

_Run. Run. Don’t let go. Please don’t leave me. Oh God get out of here._

I stand and she faces me in the dark in front of the stone. Then she laughs, pulling me by the shirt collar as we both collapse against the stone and for a moment I feel its wrongness under my hand, sun-warmed and welcoming instead of night-cold and powerful. I look up to the icy stars in the night, blink down to golden sun light on the rock. Then her mouth is on mine and I taste strawberries, I taste strawberries and feel the sun and the soft curls at the back of her neck under my fingers. Dazed, I feel her body rise against my hand as it slides down her hip.

There is one clear moment when I see her head fall back, short curls against her neck, sun on her face, mouth parting to cry out, and my vision blurs a moment as I almost hear her name ... _Beh_ ... _Bev?_ ... _Beth_?

**"DEFILER!"**

* * *

The booming voice knocks my breath out a moment before a giant fist knocks me away from her, off the stone. The taste of strawberries turns coppery on my tongue.

A tall, forbidding man stalks toward me. He wears great black boots and a Puritan Magistrate’s garb; he holds a black book dripping blood. I'm yanked up by a fist more claw than hand, beaten down to the ground, yanked up, beaten down again. And again. And again. I can barely see the girl’s limp body slumped across the stone behind him.

**"WITCH!"**

yank. slam.

" **UNNATURAL BEAST!"**

yank. slam.

**"YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD ESCAPE JUDGEMENT?"**

yank.

**"THE POWER OF UNHOLY ALLIANCE IS IMPUISSANT IN THE FACE OF GOD'S HOLY WRATH!"**

He flings me back onto the stone. I land heavily on top of the girl and she cries out once, sharply.

**"NOW, DEMON! NOW, MURDERER!"**

I start to push myself up but find somehow both my hands are braced on the girl's chest, my little knife between them, embedded deeply in her heart. She stares up at me, her eyes fixed and glassy and even looking directly at them I can't tell what color they are. 

I stare at the blood on my hands, shaking my head. “No, no I –”

"Now, Witch. Defiler. Unnatural Beast." His hiss turns low and harsh, but there is nothing sane in the Magistrate's eyes or his rictus grin as he bends over me. I smell smoke and tar, decay and blood wafting from his mouth and try to block the girl's body with my own. 

He effortlessly pulls her away, lifts her up, and ... 

"You have your Sacrifice, but no power from it," he hisses. 

I watch him tear her to pieces. The shock and terror still me; confusion and grief and horror stop my tongue. 

And then he throws what's left of her on top of me. "And lo, how the WRATH OF GOD MULTIPLIES WITH THE MURDER OF THE INNOCENT ..."

I scream, and scream, and scream, until the Magistrate claws me up, flings me with unnatural strength out of the clearing, crashing through the woods. The world goes black.

* * *

_I fall to my knees in the forest, scraping the skin but hastily scrambling to my feet. I’m picking my way through the loamy underbrush of dense woods on bare, scratched feet, a thin knife held low in my hand and a sack thrown over one shoulder. …_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this turned dark fast. Hell is pretty unpleasant, but bear with me. Your friendly neighborhood Devil will be rejoining us shortly.


	3. The Shapes of Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because sometimes helping someone get out of their head can help you get out of your own for a bit, too.

I can’t tell you how many times I relived that horrible night in the woods. Little details changed; some things took more time, or less, even though there wasn’t any time.

I only know that one time I was weaving through the trees, the night full dark but still early enough that the forest yet hadn’t condensed into suffocating brambles, when I rounded a tree and saw something strange enough to bring me up short.

* * *

_... then ..._

A slim, dark-haired man leaned against a tree in the clearing, arms folded, staring up at the sky. That was odd enough in this endlessly lonely wood. But stranger, he wore no stockings, no breeches, no vest or doublet. He wore a … a …

 _A suit_. My rusty brain supplied. _A wristwatch_. 

Clothes that didn’t exist in the 1620s. The entire world around me seemed to … _blink_ …

“You know, these are the most accurate stars I’ve ever seen in a hell-loop,” the man said in a cheerful, silky voice. “Most of the time the damned spend all their energy on visions of horror or despair or vengeance but totally neglect all the finer details. You have a vivid imagination, darling. Seems a shame to waste it.”

“You can’t be here,” I whispered. “You don’t belong here. This isn’t ...”

One side of the man’s mouth quirked, amused. “I assure you, I am on home turf. You, on the other hand … are you sure you belong here?"

He eyed me up and down as if looking straight through not just my clothes but my skin too, and smiled a little more wolfishly when I covered myself with my arms.

The man gestured lazily above him. "If you have mind enough to paint in the Andromeda galaxy, you might have mind enough to remember other little details, hmm?”

I look down at my muddy breeches, my torn vest and ruff.

_Hands tugging my shirt collar, strawberries in my mouth …_

My thoughts were spinning, and I tried to cling to snippets as they passed. It felt like it took a long time, but the man just watched me curiously, drumming his fingers against his arm.

“I remember … rolling siege machines ... no, that's wrong. ... no, they were _cars._ " I felt my eyes widen with a picture that seemed like something from a nursery tale but somehow wasn't, ". _.._ cars on a street."

"Butter on my fingers at a movie, but I I don't know what that ... And walking on a long road wider and smoother than anyone could make," I said, "but that can’t … I’m not …"

His eyes gleamed at me, pleased. "Those are real," I said slowly. "Somehow those are real and this ... isn't, is it?”

“Right in one!” the dark man said in a mocking voice. "My, my."

His eyes glinted orange fire, though there was none around us to reflect.

“Where are you then, hmm?" he teased, his voice both cruel and still curious. "Do you knoo-ow? Are you a time traveler in one of your little science fiction movies? Are you dreaming?”

 _Science fiction movies_ nearly untethered my mind again with a flurry of images I didn't know how to remember. But glancing at the woods around me, I knew what I did remember. I feIt cold certainty, a despair so deep it helped my mind find solid ground.

“I’m in Hell," I said. "I have to be. This is Hell and you are the Devil.”

His mouth quirked again. “Smart little soul, you are. Quite right.”

He shrugged off the tree and approached, now sniffing and pulling a pout as he looked around.

“Your hell-loop is exquisite, little one, but the narrative is downright _plebeian_. A demonic ritual? An innocent sacrificed to your lust and will to power? As a metaphor, it’s a little on the nose, don’t you think?" His eyes flared. "Aren’t you bored? Aren't you ready to _leave_ yet?”

I thought of the girl’s hand in mine and my chest contracted sharply. I had to save … but then I thought of her blood and the knife in my hands and looked up at the Devil.

“Yes. … Yes, I’m ready to leave. I’m Damned, but this isn’t real.”

* * *

The woods shivered. The trees melted away until we stood in an empty field of grass and stone, wide as Montana, and across the sky the glorious ribbon of the Milky Way painted itself from one horizon to the other. The Devil’s eyes widened fractionally, the fire in them filling up with stars.

We stood side by side. The Devil who would become my Boss just stared at his stars, stiller than I’ve ever seen him since. At last he shook himself a little and looked at me with a little more interest than mockery.

“This is very well done,” he said. “Do you think you are ready to remember the rest?”

I swallowed, nodded.

“When did you die?”

I looked down at myself, pulling anything that seemed real from my brain. I saw a white shirt, denim bell-bottoms. The warm sunlight that kept popping up in the middle of the night.

“19 … 69? Sometime in spring, I think.”

He hmmed thoughtfully, put his hands on my shoulders. “And why are you here?”

“I’m a ... demon …” The Devil snorted and I amended quickly, “… or maybe a witch? I messed around with occult power …”

“Bah! Metaphors and clichés again.”

His eyes flared orange again, burning into mine. “You have to look at it. You have to say its true name. What happened? Who were they, in your loop? Why are you here?”

I fell to my knees, dizzy and concentrating as hard as I could. I saw the girl in her white dress again. Her head falling back in sunlight. The taste of strawberries and copper and a feeling of rage and hurt spiraling up from the center of my being. I was shaking so hard I felt like I could break apart, and the Devil’s hands clawed into my shoulders in a crushing, implacable grip. The pain ... sharpened things somehow ... I almost could see it ...

And then it stopped. I took a deep breath.

“Defiler,” I whispered. “Murderer.” Something was just out of reach, but it felt truer in my head than being a witch. “That’s why I’m here. I’m a murderer. A monster.”

“Aaahhhhh.”

The Devil sighed and rocked back on his heels. “True enough, I suppose.”

The fire in his eyes faded to black, his mouth turning bored and irritated. He cast a last look at the sky, then back down at me, huddled uncertainly on the ground.

“It’s enough to leave this loop, at any rate,” he said briskly, wiping his hands of the whole thing. The sky and world melted around me until I found myself huddled before him on a narrow, cobbled street in the rain, outside a long, dingy line of row houses.

“Oh, stand up, stand up, why don't you?" he said irritably. I stood. "Alright, you’re damned. Go be a monster for awhile if you like. This is Pandaemonium; it always needs monsters. With your artistic ability I’m sure you’ll fit right in. Happen to remember your name?”

I tensed, then shook my head. He looked at me, thinking, then the corner of his mouth quirked again.

“From now on you are Marinus the Shaper. Go make something of yourself.” He waved dismissively.

At the gesture I felt my body stretch, limbs sprouting, ripples of color washing across my skin as it turned to fur, then scales. I fought, gasping and moaning in agony, but fell trapped into my own writhing self.

The Morningstar laughed, then shivered into a great black Wyrm with giant bat wings. “Better than a hell-loop, eh? When you control yourself enough to choose, it won’t hurt so much.”

He pumped great membranous wings and lifted into the air.

“And Marinus, if you live, find your way to my castle. I doubt anything will come of it, but I see the possibility for honesty in you. I enjoy those who don't let themselves be boxed in by stuffy little hell-loops and boring Shapes. And I like your stars.”

And then the King of Hell flew away, and I sank into the madness of my changes.


	4. Clothes Make the King

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a short century or two in which Lucifer wears extravagant clothes and tries not to wish for bad coffee.

_…three hundred sixty days, two months, four days…_

For the first century or so Lucifer could almost believe he didn’t have time to miss Los Angeles.

He called the first Wild Hunt in centuries as soon as he returned and rode down every single demon who had dared disobey his ban on possession. He was driven by literally incandescent rage and deep-held terror at the thought of any Hell denizen going AWOL again. While making each one a more creative object lesson than the last, the High King also rode the perimeter of the kingdom, checking the security of every possible border and portal. Even the most powerful wizard in the living world abruptly discovered that trying to summon a demon resulted in the infernal equivalent of “file not found.”

Yet reconnecting with his realm also disturbed him more than he’d expected. The common demons and imps had groveled at his return—which was appropriate—but many also enthusiastically cheered and hailed him as their returning savior, which gave him the creeps. He hated to admit it (which is why he hadn’t, to anyone), but that idiot Dromos had had a point. Hell had gone off decidedly without a hand basket in his absence.

The High Princes of Hell had not so much rebelled this time as simply fallen into general war among themselves. Beelzebub had taken over Gehenna, previously Belphegor’s territory, and the displaced Demon Prince had ended up in charge of the Satanic Mills, which ground down souls in endless bureaucracy and slave labor. But Belphegor was the High Demon of Sloth, and under its infernal influence the Mills had all but ground to a halt. Parts of the icy abyss had thawed, producing a strange mist that now regularly fogged over the lake of fire. In the long lanes of hell-loops, where souls were trapped in their worst nightmares or memories again and again until they could face their sins, the crocodile-headed Ammit had started straight-out eating all of those she thought were taking too long about it, which was generally whichever one she was closest to when she started feeling peckish.

Even Mammon and Leviathan, who he knew had been angling for the throne practically since the Fall, had seemed downright relieved to dump the mountains of complaints into Lucifer’s lap.

Which was why Lucifer made a point of holding court now only in the formal receiving room in full Demon King mode, crimson skin freshly oiled and glistening, dew claws and tips of his demon wings polished and sharpened to obsidian sheen. His royal regalia was appropriately over the top, encrusted with cursed jewels and engraved with the myriad marks of his station. Only about a third of which he’d made up himself.

While over the eons he had enjoyed riffling through bodies and costumes like the accessories they were, he’d preferred to stay in this one since Dromos and his little band of miscreants had forced him to come back. It was good for inspiring awe, terror and whimpering obsequiousness, and he wanted it very clear that if Satan ain’t happy, ain’t nobody gonna be happy. He’d thought briefly of staying permanently on fire, but the effect seemed like too much effort to keep up and he thought himself likely to burn something accidentally by brushing against it, which would set his fearsome reputation back significantly.

At any rate, he couldn’t stay long in the form he’d used in Los Angeles. Not because it was difficult; Lucifer enjoyed the bitter irony of perfect control now over his demonic and angelic forms. Nor did his human form—pure, devil-may-care seduction clad in an immaculate suit, the creases sharp enough to draw blood—show weakness to his infernal subjects. Indeed, the imps and lesser demons fled faster from him in that form, and even his generals shifted nervously when they caught a glimpse of him in the distance, needlessly straightening his cuffs.

And not because it _hurt_. Oh no. Wearing his human Shape was Hell’s purest torture, because it felt good, so good to stand as a man in the clothes he wore _there_ , which every so often offered up the memory of a scent: The vintage-leather smell of the Corvette, the spicy-fruity smoke of two fingers of Macallan, neat. That faintly banana smell of the smoke machine at the Lux. The eye-watering bitterness of the precinct coffee pot and the over-sweet syrup and foam of the lattes he brought in for the Detective. Or the Detective herself: The scent of her skin had somehow embedded itself into his shoulder sleeve on the side she had often leaned against, and he could detect her shampoo in a single golden strand he’d found stuck to his lapel.

No, he tried to avoid his human Shape because in the face of that torture came the risk of the addiction Lucifer Morningstar most despised: self-deception.

Sitting on the High Throne, far from view, Lucifer had only to close his eyes and tilt his head, and Hell would obligingly make the Throne feel like a cheap, slightly off-kilter office chair underneath him. He could feel _mildly uncomfortable_ for hours on end if he gave in and allowed himself to pretend he was still in the precinct, sitting across a desk from her. Working his way through endless Hellish paperwork that had piled up in his absence, it was all he could do not to think of his Detective, out in the living world, perhaps bent over her own stack of paperwork with one rebellious lock of hair pulling out of its ponytail to fall over her cheek. It was only his greatest sin, Pride, that kept him from becoming as much a useless junkie as the least soul trapped in a hell-loop, and he kept his eyes open and watching his Realm, whenever he sat the Throne.


	5. One Fish, Two Fish, Hell Fish, New Fish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Despite the High King of Hell’s self-imposed vigilance, Lucifer entirely missed the first signs of real trouble in the realm: the fish.

_…three hundred sixty years, two months, 12 days…_

Despite the High King’s self-imposed vigilance, he entirely missed the first signs of real trouble in the realm: the fish.

A handful of flames detached themselves from the Fiery Lake and flickered into a school of [veiltail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veiltail#/media/File:Veiltail_Goldfish.jpg) goldfish, joined soon after by bubbling lava that percolated into a half-dozen [celestial-eyes](https://www.aquafood.co.uk/product/red-celestial-eye-fantail-goldfish/). No one particularly noticed, as the damned souls were busy screaming and the demons were busy turning the rotisseries and poking the ones who managed to get close to the edge of the lake. The glittering little red, orange and yellow fish wove in and out among the flames for awhile before flickering up into the night like rising sparks.

In one of the deeper caverns, where phosphorescent acid endlessly dripped into the eyes of the tortured souls chained below, one thin drizzle changed en route into a long, fluorescent green [unagi](https://www.the-scientist.com/the-nutshell/glowing-green-eel-39166) followed by a couple of drops of neon tetras, all of whom darted off into the dark. All those in the caverns had been long since blinded, but at least one felt a blissful few pain-free moments before the next round of dripping began.

On a boulder in the center of rocky desolation, the former tyrant Breschau hung chained to a rock by hundreds of tiny hooks through his skin. He hung entirely alone, as damned and demon alike had tired of his constant humble-bragging about all his notorious evil deeds. Breschau did notice when his hooked chains abruptly turned into the hooked tentacles of a cheerful pink-and white [colossal squid](https://www.tepapa.govt.nz/discover-collections/read-watch-play/science/anatomy-colossal-squid/arms-and-tentacles-colossal), but as the animal's saucer-sized eyes seemed attentive to his stories, Breschau considered his situation slimier but generally improved.

And so it went. Throughout the realm, in twos and threes and handfuls, tiny bits of Hell occasionally dissolved into fish. And until Horb the factory demon got caught with ash in his pants, they swam under the radar. 

* * *

Horb considered himself a practical demon. He was nothing much to look at as demons go: squat, tumorous, and grey—but he was careful and meticulous in his job, pulling out teeth in a long assembly line of demons yanking body parts from shrieking souls. He never just yanked and broke off a root. He always twisted each molar slowly to grind it against its neighbor so that victims could hear the noise in their skulls, stolidly putting in his time for a promotion to one of the dentist hell-loops.

Indeed, Horb had been so industrious over the centuries that he skirted dangerously close to actual virtue from time to time. Beelzebub, High Prince of Envy, kept the lesser demon from accidentally taking any true joy in his work through basic management skills: Horb was praised, he was even named “Demon of the Week” and made to wear the accompanying hat, but he was never, ever promoted. It kept Horb eternally resentful of his colleagues, doubling and redoubling his efforts but only ever considering his own work as fuel for his relentless monotone of complaints. And it had the happy side effect of being a wise management decision on Beelzebub’s part, because Horb’s industry far surpassed his imagination, and damned, dentist-fearing souls in his hell-loops would inevitably crash out from sheer boredom in only a decade or two.

Horb’s resentfulness and industry had saved him a few centuries before, though. Dromos once worked only a few stations down, popping eyeballs after Horb finished with the teeth and Squee, the lazy little stain, just tweezed a few nose hairs. Horb was as excited as the rest of the mob when that strange damned soul came down the line howling about prophesies and recruiting demons to help Lucifer return to Hell, though he was a little doubtful that there was anything Earthside that Horb could do that his King couldn’t do perfectly well on his own if he wanted.

Still, he would’ve gone over to help if Dromos hadn’t asked Squee to join him first. _Squee?!_ he'd thought murderously. _It couldn’t even tell which end of human was up! What good would it be on Earth? How could Dromos possibly have picked Squee to be his left-hand demon? Well, fine, then!_

So Horb had put off jumping into a handy human with Dromos’s crew. Instead, he muttered spitefully to himself before getting distracted, and then overwhelmed, by the work piling up as other demons left their souls thumping along the conveyor belt while they jaunted off Earthside. As Beelzebub considered missing workers no excuse for unfinished work, Horb was still frantically pulling teeth, popping eyes and pulling nose-hairs 18 months later when he heard a deafening roar that shook the very ceiling of hell.

All of his missing coworkers unceremoniously dropped back into the factory, looking significantly worse for wear. The most intelligent of the lot immediately bolted out the exits for the darkest corners of Hell, but six or seven just stood around looking embarrassed and angry. Dromos, who had left like a hero launching on a quest, returned with what was left of his tails between his legs. Rage and spite burned in his pink eyes, not the least cowed by the fact that every other demon in the place looked at Dromos as though they were moments from tearing him limb from limb.

That was when the High Demon Princes Beelzebub and Ashmedai incorporated into the room, having been the closest on the scene. At once all the demons had begun howling and gibbering at once, trying to absolve themselves for leaving their posts and shift blame where they could. The insectile High Prince of Envy quieted them with a high-pitched buzz like a thousand nails scraping down a chalkboard in tandem. By her side, the High Prince of Lust sought out the defiant ringleader.

“Why hello, my dear Dromos,” Ashmedai purred. “So good of you to join us. I trust King Lucifer was appropriately grateful for your … rescue mission? Strange, I don’t see the Morningstar with you. You didn’t manage to lose him on the way home, did you?”

Beelzebub broke in, furious. “Traitorzzz! How dare you break ze pozzzession ban!” she buzzed, so enraged that she was having trouble preventing herself from dissolving into a swarm. “Do you want to bring ze Hozzt of ze Zzzzilver Zity down on all our headzz while ze King izz away? Or worze—bring down ze King’zzz own wrath?”

Dromos spat acid on the ground before them. “That for the Morningstar’s wrath! E’s betrayed us all! Abandoned us to play nicey-nice with humans and his feathered-freak brother Amenadiel, that’s what, and said Earth had better company than Hell. E’ don’t even smell right anymore.”

Beelzebub shot Ashmedai a many-eyed glance, and the High Demon of Lust quirked an eyebrow. “Hmm, funny,” they said, “only the High King could have sent all of you scampering back home, Dromos, so the ink must not be quite dry on the Morningstar’s resignation letter.”

A shattering bolt of blue-white lightning razored the sky above them, making both Beelzebub and the factory full of demons jump but Ashmedai only smile thinly. “In fact,” they said, peering up at a barely discernible figure diving down toward them in the lightning’s wake, “Our sovereign appears to be on his way back now. I’m certain your visit reminded him of how much he missed home. Beelzebub, perhaps it would be wise to invite our Lord’s guests to join us for his return party?”

Beelzebub’s thousands of faceted eyes glinted with malice. “I am sure it would be an exzzelent welcoming gift,” she said, as the room erupted into a chaos of terrified, stampeding demons trying to escape.

Through all this, Horb had kept his head down and continued methodically twisting out teeth; even the damned held their screams to muffled chokes as they passed down the assembly line, unwilling to draw the attention of an obviously higher pay grade of pissed-off demons. Beelzebub and Ashmedai likewise ignored him, with the former swarming to collect fleeing demons.

The latter caught Dromos on a meat hook and hauled him up until the two were face to face, then whispered something Horb couldn’t quite catch but that took all the defiance out of the lesser demon at once and left him dangling limply. Horb caught a hissing question from the Demon prince: “—ibe thmell?” and Dromos answering in a low whine as he was dragged away. 

All in all, Horb remembered it as a pretty good day. And the few decades after had been even better, providing plenty of opportunities to rat out former good-for-nothing co-workers still trying to hide from their icily enraged King. He’d even been rewarded for his loyalty, being asked by the Morningstar himself to punish of one of the rebels, Eddie the Tooth Child. It was a real honor, and there wasn’t a whole lot left of Eddie after Horb twisted out all his many layers of teeth.

That little win gave Horb the confidence to suggest to Beelzebub that he take over Eddie the Tooth Child’s old hell-loop, where he could really build out the whole tooth-twisting expertise.

Beelzebub could not smile, but her proboscises wriggled with delighted malice. “Oh, nonono, Horb, thatzz not pozzzible. You are now ze zzenior demon in your department, much too important for a mere hell-loop. In fact, I wazzz juzzt about to announce your promotion to junior-under demon to ze third zzzecretary of ze fourth quadrant. No more pulling teeth, much more paperwork and zzzzupervizzzing. Welcome to middle-management!”

That was the last time Horb had drawn attention to himself. Until the ash bunny.

* * *

_…three hundred sixty-three years, one month…_

Ash is the primary weather in Hell. Obviously, ashes waft constantly from the Fiery Lakes and the molten pits and volcanic mountains that ring the central Castle of the King, but that’s just a start. Great drifts of radioactive ash form the frozen hellscapes, cold as snow but without its pristine or reflective beauty. Slushy pollution-mixed ash drizzles down relentlessly in the cities, ensuring everything gets damp, but nothing can ever get clean.

In the bland industrial parks around the factories, damned souls push brooms up and down, piling up tufts of dust and ash into balls that roll down the streets like monstrous dust bunnies. Anyone unlucky enough to get too close tends to end up in Hell’s version of a tumble-dry for a century or two.

Horb had just left the factory after his double shift of tooth-twisting and was headed toward his next double-shift of tooth-twisting at the next factory over when he caught sight of the ash-bunny. It was about three times his height, a relatively small one, and easy enough to dodge. Horb was just edging past it when he spotted some—flash—out of the corner of his farthest eye.

Something silvery flickered inside the ball. Horb stopped, stared. There was another. Then a hundred more and another hundred narrow little shapes shimmering into a school. They swirled up through the ash like a little tornado, undulating. As the demon watched, clumps of ash-flakes flickered into tiny, sparkling scales and another thin sardine brushed his nose as it flitted through the air next to him and then back into the swirl.

Had Horb been a damned soul, there’s at least a small chance he would have recognized what he was witnessing: the development of a giant bait-ball, the swirling disco-ball formation that schools of sardines use to confuse predators. Perhaps if he’d known, he would have also known that such formations can be just as dangerous to get close to as ash-bunnies.

But Horb was a demon; it looked to him as though the ash was turning into a cloud of living diamonds, of molten moonlight … of … of … of just the most and only beautiful thing he had seen in the dull millennia of his existence. He stood frozen as the sardines brushed closer, then enveloped him, and he found himself lifted and tumbled over and over in that sparkling sphere. At times they pressed so close that he could see nothing at all, but only feel their thousands, millions of smooth bodies wriggling around him. He could barely breathe, hardly think, but even then he could still hear a crazed sound from his own throat, laughing for joy.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While researching some of my hell-invading fish friends, I found some truly awesome pictures. I added links on a few, but you should really go google "celestial-eyes." The dopey cuteness overload is beyond all measure.


	6. A Sound No Demon Should Make

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Lucifer comes upon a puzzle.

_Lucifer … three hundred sixty-three years, one month, 12 days …_

“My Lord King, surely you would agree that it is time for the agreement over the Wood of Suicides to be renegotiated?” Baphomet stroked their goat beard earnestly. “Its growth has pushed my territory back nearly as far as the burning river at this point.”

“You can’t blame Mrtyu-mara for making a sound long-term investment,” Lucifer said smoothly, nodding to the six-eyed, multi-limbed woman beside him. “When you agreed to their terms, the Wood was tiny, and for eons you have been able to make significantly more use of those lands than they have. But we just aren’t getting heretics like we used to, while the suicides are a dime a dozen lately.”

“It makes no sense!” Baphomet growled. “There are more atheists and heretics than ever before! Earth is crawling with them. Where are they all?”

Mrtyu-mara gave a phlegmy laugh as though choking on her own blood. “You miscalculated, Baphomet. Heretics they may be, but they feel no dismay over it in the end. Many of them fear no judgement from the Adversary Above because they believe it either doesn’t exist or cares nothing for them. That’s not a recipe for guilt over heresy—but it _is_ a fine recipe for despair, self-destruction, twisting themselves into beautiful knots of existential angst …”

“Yes, yes, lovely work,” Lucifer said with a negligent flip of the hand. The Wood of Suicides had been changed from a small, haphazard snarl of wild trees and hell-loops to an elaborate Bonsai garden of meticulously twisted souls. Good for picnics, really, except for the moaning and whimpering. He shook his head at his goat-faced Duke. “Baphomet, the agreement stands until the end of the millennium, as before. These things swing back and forth, as you know. Everything’s going virtual Earthside, anyway. You had good luck back in the ‘80s freaking mums out with demons in tabletop games; maybe get your demons to drop archaic clues that don’t lead anywhere in a video game or two, hmm?”

With that, Lucifer spread his hands flat against the Throne and pushed himself to stand, signaling the meeting—and the audience period—at an end. Baphomet muttered to themselves but the two Dukes bowed low in acquiescence and backed away, the last of a loaded and exhausting docket for the day. Endless squabbles, unrelenting annoyances and grievances and jockeying for position. Had he ever enjoyed the game? Perhaps. There had been a time when he had enjoyed playing the demons off one another, balancing their fears and desires and resentments into not just a house but a whole realm of cards, just to see how high he could make it go. And then he had wanted nothing more than to just blow it all down. He’d never counted needing to clean up the pieces afterward.

More fool him.

All of his Court and guards came to attention as Lucifer stood. The remaining petitioners would wait, or they would not, and it wasn’t much to him either way; he didn’t exactly keep regular office hours. He heard the usual grumble of misery and resentment simmering among the ones who had yet to be heard.

But as Lucifer turned to leave through the rear antechamber, he heard a different sort of commotion rising from the hall beyond the throne room doors: the clatter of bodies pushing and shoving, frightened voices and underneath, a sound hair-raisingly wrong in the halls of Hell: soft, wondering laughter.

Abruptly the doors swung in and two demons half fell into the room, dragging a third between them. The dragged one was covered thick with ash from head to toe, dusting the floor with it, and he writhed and giggled as if being tickled. Lucifer was struck, nastily, by a memory of Maze playing with Trixie; this laughter sounded too innocent and happy to come out of a demon’s throat. Some of the lower members of the court covered their ears in dismay.

“Mercy, yer Majesty! Help us!” cried one of the carriers, a mid-sized demon with the head and back of a slavering wolf on the legs and body of a preying mantis. He recognized this one, at least.

“Ketele, what is this?” he snapped.

“We don’t know what, yer Kingship,” Ketele cringed. “We found Horb like this in the street; we can’t wake him up. He keeps talking about wriggling lights all over him. He’s supposed to be in the factory but some of the Damned started making that noise, like what he is, when they saw him. We didn’t know what to do.”

Lucifer pushed a questioning probe of his own power into the ash-covered demon. The writhing stilled, as did the laughter, but the demon felt _off_ , as though there was a layer of something else between the King of Hell and his subject. It felt almost familiar, but he couldn’t place it. The creature’s face still twisted awkwardly in what Lucifer dimly realized was the equivalent of a smile. “How did this happen?”

“It seems obvious, my Lord,” Ashmedai said languidly, lifting their head from where it was cushioned in their fist in one of the sumptuous seats. The High Demon of Lust wore their shining blood-red hair pulled back at the base of their neck, playing off the silvery undertone of their skin. The swirling smoke of their eyes was leonine and amused. “The idiot obviously got tumbled in an ash-bunny and it knocked what passes for its brains into Limbo. A little time in a torture chamber will end the giggling rather effectively, I’d say.”

“No, that’s not right,” said a small voice. It was the other demon who’d carried in Horb in; a kitsune whose seven fox tails included a few scorpion tails in the mix. “It wasn’t his fault.”

Ashmedai scowled at the creature for daring to contradict a High Prince, but Lucifer eyed it more closely. Now that he looked again, it wasn’t a demon at all, or at least not a Hellborn, but instead one of those rare Damned who’d made it out of their hell-loops but never quite finished the trip. In fact, he distantly thought he recognized this one. 

“Marinus, aren’t you?” he said.

“Err … yes, Boss,” stammered the kitsune, its fur wavering to scales a moment in nervousness before it solidified.

“Managing to keep in Shape, are you?” he drawled.

The little demon laid its front paws straight in a foxy bow, head down. “Thank you, your Majesty,” it said.

“Disagreeing with a High Prince isn't the best way to stay in one piece, I'm afraid,” Lucifer said, a warning edge to his voice. “I hope you have a good reason.”

Its fur wavered again, but it looked up. “It looks like ash now, your Majesty, but it wasn’t ash when it attacked Horb.”

“It wasn’t ash? What was it, then?”

“It was … it was fish, your Majesty.”

“It was _what_?” Lucifer couldn’t help his own bark of laughter, and the rest of the Court followed, uproariously.

The kitsune shivered, melting into an orange-scaled humanoid with a few extra tentacles which began anxiously rummaging in a small pouch at its belt. “I swear to you, it was a cloud of fish. Little silver fish. When Horb passed out they started turning back into ash again, but …”

Ignoring the gales of malicious laughter coming from the Court, Marinus dug out something held tightly in the pouch, something wriggling madly and glinting diamond bright. The demon opened its tentacles slightly and a thin silver sardine burst into the air in front of Lucifer.

“… I caught one.”

Lucifer blinked.

The entire Court went quiet.

The little ash fish darted one way, then another in the air as though seeking its school. When Lucifer reached out to catch it, it crumbled into dust in his hands.

“What the _Hell_?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I pull names for my demons from anywhere that seems to have a cool demon name that matches the personality I want. Some of those, like Ketele, were in the original Hell of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series, where the original Lucifer Morningstar character came from (though aside from the piano bar and a sometimes-friendship with Maze, he's a very different Devil than the one solving mysteries with the LAPD). I try to keep the canon demons the same as their personalities from the book or TV show, with TV trumping comics if need be. But the other demons come from whatever mythology seems to have a neat one. Baphomet was considered a demon of heresy; when members of the Knights Templar were burned at the stake, it was said they'd made a pact with this one. Mrtyu-mara is a demon of death and suicides which I believe is common to both Hindu and Buddhist mythology. (Feel free to correct me if you know more about this one!)


	7. Case Notes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Lucifer has a long day at the office.

Lucifer stared at the empty cavern and rubbed his temples. _I miss Ella_ , he thought.

It was an unexpected, bittersweet little thought. Because of course he missed the _Detective_. Missing her was like working to breathe with one lung cut out of your chest. He missed Maze’s lithe, pleasantly vicious presence at his side, particularly now that he was again surrounded by the infernal aristocracy. But this caught him by surprise. He could almost hear Ella’s perky chatter, overly cheerful about gruesome details. She would have clucked over him and said something about him looking tired. Ella would have laughed when he made an inappropriate joke, the two of them playing naughty schoolkids to the Detective’s serious teacher.

Lucifer couldn’t make silly jokes in Hell; no one got them. He was stuck at a crime scene he couldn’t read—the third in as many weeks—surrounded by detritus that may or may not be significant, and he had no idea what to do.

He missed his friend.

After the sardine had shown up in his Throne room, Lucifer had called on Marbas, the leonine Duke of Hell and keeper of hidden things, to lead search teams through the realm, trying to figure out where the fish had come from and what they had done to Horb. The demon remained in a castle storage room he had haphazardly turned into a sick-room; Hell wasn’t known for hospitals, apart from the Mengele Nazi variety. While the demon had not started laughing again, neither had he come to; he only stared about as though Hell’s misery had turned to beauty around him, and would drift off to sleep if someone wasn’t immediately on hand to keep him awake. As demons don’t sleep at all normally, this had escalated the murmurs of concern among Hell’s elite.

And Marbas’s team had turned up another “victim.” It was a Soul this time, the petty tyrant of a long-forgotten empire, unable to face that even his greatest achievements and worst crimes were long forgotten to history. They’d come upon him hung in the tentacles of a Pepto-Bismol-pink colossal squid, the hooks of its suckers holding him in place and its great yellow eyes on his face as he prattled on. He paid no notice of any of them at all until Lucifer had ripped back one of those gigantic cephalopod arms—it had taken significant strength, and he’d felt the firm, wet reality of it under his hands—and the huge thing had relaxed its embrace, dumping the Soul to the ground and dissolving, leaving Lucifer holding a crumbling, rusted set of hooked chains.

“N-No,” whispered the Soul, his eyes blank but staring blindly around him. “No, come back, please? I-I can’t find you. Can’t you hold me a little longer?”

He didn’t scream, or thrash in torment. He just went on in that puzzled, lost voice, calling in little more than a whisper. It made Lucifer’s wings arch up in chills, and some of his hellhounds cringed back from him. The tyrant had ended up in another cell in the castle. The strength of Lucifer’s worries and of the memories of cases in LA had caused him to wake up nearly angelic for several days now, sliding into human form and holding onto his great red wings over glowing white ones with an effort.

And now this place. A whole cavern of fiery pits, nearly a hundred Souls and the Demons guarding them all found wandering together outside. Some of the Demons were walking hand in hand with the Souls. They were _humming_. The tune sounded cheerful and teasing and somehow familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it.

Inside, the fiery pits looked like perfectly ordinary fiery pits. They smelled of Sulphur and other noxious things, they were surrounded by ash-covered rock. Nothing looked out of sorts, except that the whole place was empty. He paced around the edge of one of them, peering into a lava pool, then stepping back with a hiss when a tiny spark singed his Armani slacks.

“Boss? Boss!” Short, urgent barks drew Lucifer’s attention from his ruined slacks. Ketele, Marinus, and a pack of hellhounds were deeper in the cavern, nosing around to try to pick up a trail. The mantis-wolf poked a slavering head around the corner, his ears flattened against his head in worry, and gestured urgently with a barbed leg. “We found more, Boss. … Come quietly if you can.”

Lucifer smirked. No one can be as quiet as the Devil on a Hunt. He paced beside the shoulder-high mantis, ducking slightly to enter a smaller antechamber where a little rivulet of lava had turned into a simmering pond, barely bigger than a toddler pool. A corpulent demon lay beside the pool, dangling its claws next to the lava. A Soul sat cross-legged next to the demon, one hand lightly on its fleshy side, the other holding out a charred and peeling hand to a little bunch of bobble-eyed goldfish that wove in and out between her fingers. They were both watching the goldfish, and Lucifer heard, with chills running down his whole body, the Soul softly putting words to the tune he’d heard outside:

> _“Nine little fishies, swimming in the sea,_
> 
> _Teasing Mr. Shark, ‘No, you can’t catch me.’_
> 
> _Along comes Mr. Shark, quiet as can be_
> 
> _Aaand …. Snap!_
> 
> _Eight little fishies, swimming in the sea …”_

The sluggish demon jumped and chortled at each “snap,” when the Soul likewise snapped her fingers and one of the goldfish flashed into a little flame that singed the tips. Several of the demon’s eyes would tilt to the Soul’s face with an expression of childish delight before its gaze returned to the fish.

The Soul’s voice … its voice …

Lucifer took a careful step backward, nearly tripping over the kitsune behind him. Marinus cringed back, peering up at him with anxious eyes that decorated their face and back. They had more scorpion than fox tails now, striking uselessly at the air in concern.

“B-Boss, I think I know this song,” they said, opting to follow Ketele’s moniker for him, which somehow made Lucifer feel even more strongly that he was back among the police and their gruff, affable hierarchy. “But it’s an Earth song. A _nursery_ song. What—”

For a moment, Lucifer could hear the Spawn in his head, singing the inane little tune to the Detective. It made his skin crawl and his throat tighten in longing, both at the same time.

“Yes,” Lucifer said shortly. “I know.”

Ketele jolted and took a swipe at one of the fish who flickered up away from the rest of the school toward him. But the little fish easily dodged, and the wolf’s jaw softened, slackened as he looked at it. The wolf-mantis’s eyes widened fractionally. He raised a tentative limb again, this time gently reaching toward it.

“Back!” Lucifer hissed, grasping the mantis-wolf by the scruff of the neck and shoving him backward down the passage behind them. The fish that had been moving toward the demon ran into Lucifer’s arm and flared into a tongue of flame for a moment before disappearing.

Ketele slammed into a stone wall, hard, staggering to his legs and shaking his shaggy head. He grimaced. “What—?” 

Lucifer took another step back, forcing the others to move with him and deliberately moving out of the sightline of the pair on the lava bank. The hellhounds needed no further encouragement; they whimpered and backed further down the passage.

Lucifer lowered his voice to a hush directed to the creature. “Marinus, how were you able to catch the fish you took from Horb without becoming … distracted?” he ground out. “They dissolve when I try to catch them.”

Forty-seven eyes narrowed in thought. “I’m not … not sure, Boss. It brushed past me, all wriggling, and I just grabbed it. It was all I could do to jam it in a pocket, it was so squirmy.”

“Could you catch one of these?” he asked.

In answer, Marinus slunk away from where he stood and cautiously approached the lava pond. They waited until one of the goldfish flickered a little away from the rest of its school, then did a funny little fox-leap to pounce on it.

“Ouch! Boss! Help!” The little demon had pinned the fish to the ground—it flexed back and forth, its tiny mouth gaping—but Marinus’s paws began to smoke.

Lucifer thought for a moment, then pulled a bit of smoky firmament to him and rolled it briefly before tossing it toward the demon. “Put it in that.”

The kitsune tipped their paws open just as the smoky orb fell, and the fish shot out, flickering into the orb neat as you please. Marinus collapsed to their haunches, panting. Lucifer ignored them, gingerly scooping up the orb; the goldfish swam around and around inside but did not turn back into flame.

“It seems I’ve acquired a pet,” he smirked. He cut a glance to the mantis-wolf, who had leaned down to sniff Marinus. “Still all there, Ketele?”

The demon shook his head. “J’s a little off, yer Majesty. Wot’s t’do wiv them, then?” he said, gesturing to the pair still by the lava bank.

Lucifer grimaced at the Soul still crooning her song to the blissful Demon. With a “Snap!” the last goldfish flickered back into flame between the Soul’s fingers, but the Soul and Demon just continued to hum the song, looking at each other. The demon made a burbling purr, and the Soul stroked with her burnt hands as one would a cat.

The King of Hell sighed. “Put them with the others.”

* * *

Lucifer returned to Court with the search team expanded by 36 full legions of demons, all of those answering to Marbas, a Grand Duke of Hell who paced as a great horned and winged lion at his side.

The Lord of Hidden Things peered at the goldfish bowl and its flickering occupant with appropriately feline interest. Marbas’s Fall literally embodied curiosity killing the cat. He had ignored the battles in Heaven entirely, focused on exploring all the secrets and labyrinths of the Silver City. But when he saw the pit opened in the final battle of the Great War and his fellow angels cast in, he followed, unable to bear seeing an entire realm he’d never explored. He had spent the eternity since exploring Hell’s darkest and most twisting places, seeking rare tools, gems, scrolls in lost languages. He had become an expert in poisons and cures, particularly rare ones. Marbas had Lucifer’s respect and even his envy; he was the only Angel among them who had jumped, rather than being pushed.

“Your Majesty, we have not been able to find a source for them—or rather, the source seems to be Hell itself,” Marbas said in his low rumble. “We cannot divine whether some hand is pulling these creatures from the very fiber of the Realm, or whether the Realm is remaking itself. They arise from all parts and places of the land. They swim up from the flaming river and out of the Sere Mountains and have been spotted in nearly every territory in between.”

“Ha! Everyplace but the actual water,” said Ashmedai, limping up to them with a grim laugh. Back before the War, they were Asmodeus of the Seraphim, the highest rank of the Host in the Silver City. The High Prince of Lust had kept much of their angelic beauty, but in the Fall their right leg had been twisted into a huge eagle’s leg and talons, marring their stride. “I questioned Leviathan, and the only fish in the Deeps are the typical beasts that live there—so far, none of them have turned pretty. He did give me a list of his best guess on the species we’ve seen so far; Leviathan knew all of them, though he said they are all from the living world, not here.”

“But _why_? What is the purpose?” Lucifer started to lift a hand to his already rumpled hair, clenched it into a fist instead. “We have demons giggling and the Damned singing them nursery songs. We’ll have eel teaching the Lilim to make macaroni art next.”

“They are all bright … _happy_ , my Lord,” Ashmedai offered. “Could this be some new kind of attack from the Silver City?”

“Kill us with pretty fish?” Lucifer’s human lip quirked up. “Even Dad can’t be that bored, and I don’t think Michael has the imagination for it.”

Marbas’s tail lashed thoughtfully. “The ones who fall to the creatures aren’t dead; they aren’t exactly injured. And there is nothing in your domain that would poison or attack without at least giving pain. … It tickles my thoughts, but I cannot quite place the symptoms,” he said. “The creatures affect demon-kind more than the damned, we know that much. The Souls seem to interact with the creatures as if in a dream. The demons are left merely mute and awestruck.”

Lucifer frowned, thinking Ketele’s eyes losing focus as he reached out to the goldfish and Marinus’s strange ability to catch them. “Ashmedai, how many of the damned have left their loops without leaving entirely?”

Their brow furrowed in thought. “Perhaps three score, no more than that. Most of them go upstairs once they break free of their initial guilt—or get eaten by something. Not many have the strength of will to do anything else.”

Lucifer nodded. “Gather them, all you can find. We’ll expose them to the fish and see if they can hold onto their Souls. We need to find more like the kitsune who can catch the infernal things. Marbas, take Marinus with you to search; the little shaper can collect the fish for you without endangering your legion.” He waved a hand in dismissal. 

The Duke and High Prince bowed and left.

* * *

Lucifer stepped into the antechamber behind the throne room that housed his private library and office.

He ran his hands through his hair again, weary. His fingers caught in tangles and ash and he grimaced; the lack of product was yet another reason to avoid using this Shape in Hell, but his human limbs were a comfort he couldn’t quite bring himself to get rid of yet. He told himself it would be easier to review notes on the case in this form.

Lucifer took off his bespoke jacket and folded it over a chair, rolling up the sleeves of the dark grey button-down shirt underneath as he sat at his desk. The goldfish they had caught swam in tight circles around its bowl at one corner, and his notes on the case sprawled across the desk—descriptions of the scenes from Beelzebub, interviews taken with every demon or damned who had seen one of the fish and were still cogent enough to speak. Marbas was right—there weren’t many demons who could say anything at all; the few who still had the ability to speak were the ones who had turned and fled at the first sign of the fish. One incubus had been able to confirm that a tongue of flames in one pit had literally condensed into a veiltail, and it hadn’t seen any existing demons or strangers in the cavern speaking a spell or doing anything else that might have caused the fish to appear.

Even speaking that much about the fish had made the demon’s eyes soften, go far away. “It was so shining …,” it started, its raspy voice gentling before falling silent, and Lucifer had concluded the interview quickly and sent the demon off to torture a soul to get its mind off things.

How the Detective would laugh at the Devil stuck doing paperwork and stumped by a handful of fish. He smiled painfully, closing his eyes despite himself and pressing his hands against his temples.

* * *

_“Rough case, huh?”_

_A soft hand roughs the hair at the back of his neck as the Detective passes behind him, putting a cup of coffee on the counter next to him. “We can go over it together if you want.”_

_Lucifer jolts, looking up to find himself on a stool in the Detective’s kitchen. The notes pile across the counter. She’s dressed in work slacks and a dark blue blouse, giving him one of her curious, keen-eyed investigator looks—the one when they’ve found some meaty clue to follow._

_His mouth opens, but he can’t push any words past the weight in his chest. She absently pushes one stray lock of hair behind her ear as she bends over his notes, blowing out her breath in a huff when it immediately falls to her cheek again. “So, motive, means, opportunity? What’ve we got? It's probably the Sinnerman, you know; we're still trying to track down all the remains of his organization.”_

_“Mommy, did you ask Lucifer to my party?” calls a little voice behind him. Lucifer turns dazedly toward the living room, where Beatrice lays on her stomach, drawing a picture of herself holding hands with a woman in a ponytail and a bright red devil in a suit. “You should come! I’ve got a costume I’m wearing just for you, and there will be candy and chocolate cake …”_

_“Monkey, you know Lucifer’s busy at work. Let’s just get through this and we’ll see,” her mother chides gently._

_"It's OK, Lucifer; I know you'll make it," the Urchin says, turning back to her drawing. She starts humming "Five Little Fishes" under her breath as she colors._

_The Detective lays a hand over his and Lucifer turns back to her, but Chloe’s eyes hold no professional curiosity now. They are intent on his, and her hand suddenly grips his own tightly. “Lucifer, just get through this. Do you understand? I can’t know how hard it is, but you’ve got to get through it. We can solve anything together, I promise.”_

_“Chloe,” he forces out the word from lungs that can’t catch breath, a tongue turned to stone in his mouth._

_She leans over abruptly, taking his face in both hands and kissing him fiercely. It feels like light spilling into every dark part of himself, desire sparking from her mouth to his, running down every nerve. Home. He’s home. He grasps her right wrist and turns it, kissing the palm of her hand. Chloe’s eyes spill over with tears._

_“Every day I think of you. Every night I wish … Don’t forget, Lucifer. I love—”_

Lucifer forced his eyes open, jerking up from where his head had fallen against the desk and looking around frantically.

“Not real,” he whispered. “Not real. Just a-”

He howled, slamming both fists down hard enough to crack the thick ebony of the desktop and shoving the piles of paper on his desk away. The goldfish bowl tipped, crashed to the stone floor and shattered, the tiny creature inside flashing back to flame for an instant before going out. He lunged up from the chair, his chest heaving, eyes flaring red as he ripped his shirt and pants away, hurling them to the ground and flaring his demon wings, shoving his human Shape down as far as he could press it. 

He stood shaking in his devil form for a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be a fair bit of Sandman continuity, but this Lucifer remains firmly the TV version in personality. I enjoy seeing how he would handle some of the mess his comic self left behind.


	8. Catching up Earth-side

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trixie plans a raid; Linda explores the downsides of angel-babies; Maze is in the hoosegow and Chloe's vacation gets a little off track.

“’Bye monkey!” Chloe called. “Say hi to the pirates for me!”

Trixie waved wildly from Dan’s car; mouse ears already perched atop her curls in preparation for their long weekend to Disneyland with Dan’s sister and Trixie’s cousins. Funny, in a park full of every ride imaginable, Trix and her cousins almost invariably spent most of their trips swarming Tom Sawyer’s island to take over the tree house and pirate ship. Dan, for his part, had no problem trading the endless lines for a beer and well-placed vantage point outside Lafitte’s Tavern. Chloe knew they’d both come back lightly burned and grinning—and hopefully with a little of their father-daughter bond rebuilt after the tension and grief of the last several months.

Chloe rolled her shoulders. She’d be grateful for the quiet, herself. She had just barely managed to crawl out from under the mountains of paperwork left in the aftermath of the Mayan debacle and for once, when the new lieutenant suggested she take a few mental health days, Chloe hadn’t argued. Her coworkers already thought Chloe was less human than Lucifer, grimly plowing on with work through a divorce, being shot and poisoned, her fiance turning out to be a criminal mastermind, and now her longtime partner bouncing out of the picture. Again. Probably for good, this time. Her fellow cops seemed more relieved than she was whenever she took a vacation.

Four days stretched ahead of her with no kid-duty, no work-duty, and Maze off on a drug-runner bounty in South Dakota. Four days of quiet, just to reorganize her closet, binge HGTV, take a bubble bath and read trashy books …

Four days she could actually hear herself think. 

Four days alone, thinking.

Chloe sighed, deliberately breathing around the tightness in her chest.

Maybe she could visit Linda and Amenadiel to see how baby Charlie was doing. She still had some old snuggies and blankets from Trixie’s babyhood she could bring over.

_Beeee-beep! Beeee-beep!_

Chloe leaned over to fish out her phone, smiling at Linda and Charlie’s smiling faces popping up on the ID. _Speak of the Devil’s therapist, apparently_.

“Good morning, Linda, I was just thinking of you and Charlie. How are—”

“Chloe! I’m so glad you picked up. I could really use some help,” came Linda’s ever-polite yet tightly wound voice. “Maze needs to get bailed out of some jail in who-knows-where, Idaho. Amenadiel can’t go because he’s dealing with some kind of family situation and I’m up to my eyes in angel-baby puke, because apparently angels still get norovirus, which seems patently unfair.”

“Maze is _what_? How did she end up arrested?” Roughly a dozen scenarios flashed through Chloe’s brain, all of them potentially ugly.

“I’m not even sure, Chloe. I didn’t get to talk to her. I just found a voicemail from the police department after getting out of a shower with Charlie—I mean, it was in _my hair_ , you would not _believe_ , well, you had Trixie, maybe you would believe—anyway, I can absolutely send money, though I’m not sure why she didn’t call Lux …”

 _Or her roommate_ , Chloe thought but didn’t say.

She and Mazikeen had barely started rooming together again before everything happened, and they were both still a little raw around each other. If Trixie hadn’t been in the picture, Chloe doubted Maze would have even come back. They both reminded each other of _him_ ; they both remembered and tried to forgive each other their little betrayals over the years, both for Trixie’s sake and because, well, being around someone else who is grieving and angry can be a bit of a comfort as much as an aggravation. There had been times Maze’s gruff complaints about “dumb useless feelings” and drunken rants about how little either of them needed _Lucifer_ or _Eve_ or any _idiotic_ romantic entanglements were the only things keeping Chloe from melting into a puddle of self-pitying goo.

She wouldn’t mind the chance to pay her friend a little of that back.

Chloe quickly got what little information Linda could pass along, in return for her promise to get in touch with Maze and figure out what was going on. The demon bounty hunter was apparently in the local jail in Mackay, Idaho, population 517, a place so tiny she’d had to zoom in almost to street level just to find the place on Google. It wasn’t close to _anything_ , and the answering machine that greeted her at the local police office said the entire force would be out for the townwide celebration of the Mackay High School Miners’ 11th state football championship that afternoon. That last made Chloe smile to herself; this place sounded like the demon’s personal hell-loop.

Thoughtfully, Chloe pulled up flights from LAX. There was a nonstop to Boise for less than $150 she could probably catch if she left in the next hour. It would get her in by 11 a.m., from there maybe three or four hours driving … Chloe put it at maybe early evening to get there.

She left a message for the sheriff, asking him to call her when he got a chance—professional courtesy might go a little ways, anyway—and then threw together an overnight duffel with a change of clothes for each of them and headed out.

* * *

“Do you have Mazikeen Smith here?” she asked the lone officer on the desk.

“Mazi--? Oh, yeah, the crazy one. You Decker? The chief said you’d be coming.”

“Can you tell me why--?”

The officer laughed, easy and a little impressed. “She got in a fight with half of Perk’s Bar last night—including the chief’s nephew,” he said. His hazel eyes crinkled at the corners. “Couldn’t happen to a nicer douche if you’ll pardon my French. Messed up the place, took more’n a few of us to bring her in, and she’s been cursing up a storm half the day. Your friend’s a real hellion, you know that?”

Chloe smiled wryly. “You have no idea.”

“She didn’t have any ID on her, so we need somebody to vouch for her.”

That took Chloe aback. “I’m her roommate. How did she lose her ID?”

The officer shrugged as he pushed over the paperwork. “She hasn’t been what you’d call forthcoming, Detective Decker. But I’ll tell you, this isn’t exactly Perk’s first rodeo, if you know what I mean. If she hadn’t broken Stu’s arm, it wouldn’t really be an issue.”

Chloe is no Lucifer, but she's learned at least a little of his smooth-talking, and she does have a certain black credit card in her wallet, delivered a few days after he’d left her on the balcony. She’s never used it, but has no qualms making this be the first time. “I’m sure this was a misunderstanding. If you can give me a contact number for Perk’s owner and your chief’s nephew, I’m sure I can get it sorted out.”

He eyed her appraisingly, then pulled out a pad of paper and scrawled two numbers. “That first one’s Ham Litton, own’s Perk’s. The second’s the chief’s sister Donna Jezek, Stu’s mom. Don’t bother with the brat.”

She pocketed the paper as he gave her a receipt for the bail and headed back to get Maze.

Mazikeen stalked through the door in full, leather-clad bounty-hunter chic, radiating fury. She tilted her head toward the officer beside her and growled, “So I can go?”

He made an “after you” motion with his hand, then an imaginary hat-tip to Chloe, who had to half trot to catch up with the demon leaving the station.

“Maze, what—”

“Not here,” the demon snapped. She flopped into the passenger seat of Chloe’s rental, scrunching her body into crossed arms and murderous scowl, which softened as Chloe pulled out of the parking lot. “I wasn’t expecting a personal chauffer … and I can’t leave town yet,” she added as Chloe turned onto Rte. 93.

“Did something happen with your bounty?”

Maze bared her teeth. “Tracked the little worm here, but when I get here, a deputy shows up and pulls rank, says they ‘have the matter in hand.’ Fine, but something doesn’t smell right, so I stick around, follow the car and they end up at that bar, best buddies, playing pool together slick as pigs. I go in to get my bounty and it gets a little rough. The deputy calls in backup.”

“So you’re saying the police chief’s nephew helped a drug-runner get away from you by pretending you started a bar-fight?”

“Oh, naw. I totally started a bar fight,” she scowled. “Some drunk idiots tried to stop me from breaking the deputy’s arm after my bounty ran. Again. On my bike.”

Chloe thought if her eyebrows rise any higher they would float off her forehead. And Maze actually ducked her head, flustered. “I may have underestimated the dude a little,” she admitted. “But that whole jail was a joke; I was just waiting until night to leave. I guess … thanks for the bail-out, though, Decker. You came a long way.”

Chloe let her breath out. “So, what now?”

“Now you go home. I need to get my bike back. It has my bag. Which has my _knives_ —I’m down to just the two I keep on me. And my bounty.”

“Maze, you have no wallet and no transportation. And if one of these creeps is a dirty cop, you’re safer with the backing of the LAPD, even if it’s at a distance.”

“Pfft,” Maze said. “You’ve already spent enough time and money of your vacation hauling my ass out of hock.”

Chloe quirked a smile at her roommate and dug out the black card. “First off, who says I’m paying? And second, it’s my vacation. I wouldn’t mind a bit of a … hunt.”

Mazikeen’s eyes widened a bit at that. She looked closely at her roommate, the tension, grief, anger that had roiled beneath the surface for months now. Slowly, she started to grin.


	9. Stakeout with a Demon and a Sandwich

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chloe and Maze start hunting bad guys; Maze remembers some greatest hits.

The first order of business was checking into Chloe’s hotel, since Maze didn’t have a place and they needed to regroup. Maze snorted when they pulled up at the only place Chloe had been able to book on short notice: the unfortunately named Bear-Bottom Inn, a kitschy tourist BnB strung with pink paper lanterns and fronted by benches held up by carved wooden bears.

“Oh, I’m definitely telling Lucifer you picked this place,” Mazikeen sniggered, a little of her bad mood lightening. “It would be more fun if it was pants-optional though …”

Chloe rolled her eyes and hopped out, letting Maze park while she went to check in. The clerk noticed her idly thumbing through a little display of tourist brochures and gave her a wide, friendly smile. “Are you in town for the bike rodeo?”

She blinked. “Oh, uh … sure, my friend is the biker. Where is it being held?”

“Oh! Here’s a free welcome pack; it’s got a map of the fairgrounds.” The clerk pushed over a little vellum goodie bag emblazoned with “Real Cowboys Want More Horsepower” and a picture of a cowboy holding on one-handed to a “bucking” motorcycle. The clerk circled the fairgrounds on the map, highlighting the route from the hotel, and proceeded to load Chloe up with a half-dozen other pamphlets.

“While you’re in town, you should really check out the ghost tours—Mackay is a federally recognized historic ghost town from copper mining days—and if you like hiking, we’re less than an hour from Shelley Mountain and Craters of the Moon…”

“Wow, uh, thanks, thank you,” Chloe said, scooping up the armful of pamphlets and the room keys just as Maze sauntered in. “We’ll be sure to check it out.”

She ignored Maze’s raised eyebrow, passing her a key to the adjoining room as they stepped out of the elevator. “Maybe you can go on a ghost tour while I track down my bounty,” Maze drawled.

Chloe rolled her eyes. “Actually, unless you already know where your guy will be, this rodeo might be our best way to find him.”

“What? Why?”

“Because of your bike,” Chloe grinned, glad she had listened to Maze, even when Maze didn’t think she was paying attention to all those conversations about bike mods. “Your R1 is upgraded within an inch of its life, you told me; people at a bike competition ought to remember a bike like that if we ask around, right?”

Maze pursed her lips. “Not bad, Decker. My plan was to track down the deputy and have him take us to the scummy little drug dealer, but I don’t see why we can’t do both,” she said. She cocked her head a little at Chloe. “I don’t get to do group hunts much anymore. I’ve tracked down people with your ex a couple of times, but you’re more fun than Dan.”

Chloe thought about who Maze and Dan might have tracked but decided she didn’t really want to know. Instead, she said, “Did you do a lot of group hunts in Hell?”

“Sometimes,” she said, following Chloe into her hotel room rather than entering her own. “I was Lucifer’s bodyguard and head torturer; that was mostly solo work. But the elite of the Lillim reported to me, and I bred and trained the finest hellhounds in the Realm. Any traitors, any members of the aristocracy who got uppity, we tracked them down. No one ever got away from us.”

She huffed in annoyance. “Here, these idiots, it’s like hunting box turtles. No real danger, no real challenge. It took a dozen Lillim at the top of our game and a whole pack of hellhounds to track down the traitor Duke Hastur. He was tough because he kept discorporating and reforming on us. Plus all the tentacles were pretty squirmy. They were just like worms, you know? You cut one off and it keeps lashing around … ”

Chloe knew her eyes were wide, but she tried to offer an encouraging, “Oh, mmm?”

Maze was not particularly fooled. One side of her lip curled a little in contempt, then smoothed. “Anyway, let’s go check out this rodeo.”

* * *

Lucifer, Chloe realized, compartmentalized his magnetism. There was the what-do-you-desire mojo that had everyone from bar patrons to murder suspects falling over themselves to give him whatever he wanted. And then there was his evil-devil mojo, focused on scaring the bejesus out of bad guys. Maze, by contrast, just radiated sex, menace, and contempt toward everyone equally. It made most people simply back out of her way, and the rest equally divide into those who were aroused and terrified, aroused and angry, or just plain aroused. It made it easy to get people’s attention, but sometimes harder to get useful information out of them.

Of the three guys prepping for the barrel race when Maze and Chloe showed up the next morning, Bud was of the terrified variety, while the unfortunately nicknamed Thumb was just plain aroused. Jimmy was the only one worth talking to, as he fell into the first bucket; his eyes stayed mostly above the neckline and lit up when Chloe asked about a custom Yamaha R1.

“The one with the Shogun frame sliders? Hell, yeah, I saw it. Beautiful bike. Guy showed up here with it yesterday, trying to sell it. My buddy wanted to buy it but didn’t have that much cash on him,” he said. He sighed. “I told him to forget it. I figured it was hot.”

“Why do you say that?” Chloe asked.

“’Cause the guy said he'd had it for years but obviously couldn’t handle it—the bike was twitchy as hell under him, even stalled once while I was watching.” Jimmy cut his eyes between the two of them. “Yours?” he said to Maze.

“Mine.” Her eyes glinted. “You see who bought it?” 

“Nobody, as far as I know. They might have come back today, or I could call my buddy and see if he made a deal later. He really wanted it.”

“He did,” cut in Thumb like a dog looking for a treat. “If you’re talking about Alan, I think he’s meeting folks at Duff’s place to pick up something this afternoon.” He looked at Maze, and his tongue unconsciously ticked out at the corner of his mouth. “I could, uh, show you how to get there.”

Jimmy rolled his eyes at his friend. “Like you wouldn’t get your ass handed to you on a plate.” To the women, he added, “Duff’s not a good dude. If the guy who’s selling your bike is working with him, it’s not worth messing with—and frankly Alan’s an asshole to buy from him too. Just let it go and call the cops. You got insurance on it?”

Maze pulled off one riding glove with her teeth and turned her forearm up in front of Thumb’s face, digging in her pocket for a pen with the other hand. “Why don’t you write down the address for me, puppy?”

Thumb didn’t quite drool while writing directions on Maze’s arm, but it was close.

* * *

Maze’s bike was parked beside Duff’s garage, not even hidden, but her quick scouting mission found no sign of any of the men around.

She returned to Chloe’s stakeout spot with two meatball subs, a bottled water, and a fifth of bourbon—as well as her bag slung over one shoulder.

“How did you get that?” Chloe gaped.

“Subs from the sandwich place down the block, booze from the gas station, bag from the desk in the garage office,” she shrugged. “What? Nobody was there, or I would have been able to find out where my bounty is faster. But I’m not leaving my knives in there. Besides, now we can have lunch while we wait.”

Five years as partner to Lucifer Morningstar allowed Chloe to swallow what she wanted to say and simply thank Maze for the sub. While they ate, Maze filled Chloe in on what she’d learned while tracking the bounty.

Martin Trellis ran a mid-level meth operation in the region. He had cornered a few local markets, but nowhere bigger than Boise. He’d gotten it into his head that he was a crime boss and was trying to do a deal with the Sinaloa cartel in L.A. Maze wasn’t sure what had gone wrong, only that there had been a shootout that included Trellis killing Archivaldo Perez--who happened to be a second cousin of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán. Trellis had fled for home turf but even now didn’t seem to be smart enough to understand that the police were the least of his problems at this point. 

“I wonder how deep the Sheriff’s nephew is in this,” Chloe said. “Or the Sheriff himself. I got the impression at the station that other cops know he’s crooked, or at least don’t like him.”

Maze snorted. “Small-time, from what I’ve seen. All these idiots think they’re bigger than they are. … I’m not sure about the Sheriff; the nephew was gone when the police showed up.”

Maze figured she’d had maybe a two- or three-day lead on the Sinaloa people—yes, she was sure she was that good—but she needed to get her quarry back in the next 16 hours or she’d be competing with cartel hitmen.

A stakeout was different with Maze. Lucifer had always been almost immediately bored, asking questions, making dirty jokes, tossing cool ranch puffs up to catch them in his mouth. Maze was as still and silent as a panther, content to watch the bike, watch the garage, watch the sidewalks and streets around the building with singular patience and determination as the afternoon passed into early evening. And Chloe, to her surprise, found herself wanting to break the silence.

“What was the most difficult bounty you’ve ever had?”

“Here, or back home?” Maze spoke without turning her eyes from the building.

“Both?”

Maze took a gulp of the bourbon, her eyebrows furrowed in thought. Then they softened. “Here, that Canada job was fun. Rivers. He got away a couple of times, and I got to fight those assassins. Too damn cold, though.”

“He turned out to be innocent, too.”

“Hardly. But he didn’t kill those teenagers, so it was just catch-and-release. Nothing else has been much fun,” Maze said, idly spinning a blade around her finger. “I’ve had some good  _ fights— _ Cain’s crew, Dromos and his idiots, some of the gangs you guys have stumbled into—but those weren’t real  _ hunts _ .”

She bared her teeth in a smile. “Now in Hell, I could tell you some. Abbadon once flew off and left the bottomless pit. The only way we could follow him was when his locusts had to molt …”

Maze launched into a gleeful memory of tracking down the Destroyer demon with Lucifer, Belial (“dumb as a stick, but you could point him at anything”), and a pack of hell hounds. Chloe turned her brain off a little at the descriptions of the demons, but the desperate part of her heart grasped at every story of Lucifer hunting in Hell. A hunt was a little like a case, wasn’t it? It was interesting to know that she hadn't been lying in court when she'd said Lucifer's previous job gave him detective experience.

“I guess after you’ve lived in Hell, nothing can scare you on Earth,” Chloe said companionably when Maze had finished.

But the demon ducked her head a little at that, took a swig of bourbon.

“Nothing from here, no,” Maze muttered. “Two of the Endless came to Lux once after we came to L.A. That was interesting.”

“The who?”

“Hard to explain,” Maze said. “They’re not like demons or celestials, more like … concepts, maybe? Like Death and Dreaming. Lucifer had a feud going with the Dream Lord—he even tricked Morpheus into taking the Key of Hell when we came to L.A., so he had to deal with the whole mess for a while before Amenadiel showed up.”

Chloe’s brain boggled a little at the complexities of infernal politics. “So they came for revenge?”

“No, the Dream Lord and his younger sister came to get information from Lucifer about another brother of theirs, Destruction,” she said. Maze spun her knife again for a few minutes. “Delirium threatened me if I didn’t let them in. Said if I didn’t, she’d make me believe I was a half-faced demon waitress with a crush on her boss, and that I’d never know if I had ever been or would ever be anything else, and it would itch inside my head worse than little bugs.”

Maze gave a harsh, mocking laugh, but her eyes were bleak.

Chloe swallowed. “Did you?” she whispered.

“Did I what?”

“Let them into Lux.”

Maze hissed out through her teeth. 

“Yeah …. oh, yeah,” she said. “Delirium of the Endless could make you believe your own hands were butterflies—and that’s if she liked you and thought it would make you happy. While Morpheus held the Key of Hell, the High Prince Azazel tried to take it from him and ended up in a bottle on the Dream Lord’s shelf somewhere. I knew better than to stand in their way unless Lucifer had ordered me to die stopping them. And, Lucifer didn’t give a fuck; he never had it in him to be afraid of anything, even the Endless, even after fighting with Morpheus. He’ll always know who he is.”

“You always know who you are, too,” Chloe countered.

“In Hell I do. Here?” The demon gave that harsh laugh again. She gestured to her even, beautiful features. “Being stuck like this is an insult. In Hell, you are what you are, you are every experience that’s made you and everything you’ve made of yourself. I survived a battle with the angel Sandalphon; I wear the proof of it on my face in Hell and the Grand Dukes wet themselves if I look at them funny. Here, you and Lucifer went round and round like idiots about his damn face— _ ooo, is it too scary? Too ugly? Oh no I have feelings about this! _ —it was an insult. The Morningstar defied  _ God _ , fell from the fucking Silver City and survived with all his power and then some. That’s what he  _ looks like— _ ”

Maze broke off her rant suddenly, her entire body canting forward, toward the garage. 

“Enough chat,” she said. “Somebody just turned a light on in the back.”


End file.
